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The Rise of Fascism, or Is It the Return of the Robber Barons?

One of the brightest men I know, a retired Russian professor of economics in Moscow, commented that he felt I was perhaps overly disturbed by the rise of fascism. Actually, fascism does not exist. Reading history often blinds one to present reality with the belief that events replicate themselves and unfold according to earlier patterns. Fascism was a complex phenomenon which is not being duplicated today. Aspects of it - virulent nationalism, racism, autarky and the control of industry and labor by the state, authoritarian rule - these all exist in some places and to some measure today. But history is no certain guide to the future or even to the present. And Mussolini and Hitler are not reincarnated in modern authoritarian regimes. Yesterday my wife was returning to Maastricht from the north of the Netherlands by train. Outside of Utrecht the train suddenly stopped. Some poor man thinking he was making a rational decision threw himself in front of the train. The suicide meant that a ride that should have taken 90 minutes to Maastricht turned into a four hour nightmare, getting out at Utrecht again, switching to local trains, standing up in over-crowded corridors. I see Trump and his gang hijacking his nation and jumping in front of a train. By dismantling health care, public education, public housing, environmental safeguards, controls on financial institutions, he and his cronies hope to enrich themselves. And they enlist angry impoverished white working-class voters with the allure of white supremacy.
Similar movements exist in Europe, Africa and Asia, of course: in Hungary, Romania, the Ukraine, Austria, Germany, the Balkans and Greece, even here in the Netherlands.
It is not the abstract rise of fascism I fear as a European, but the very real return of the Robber Barons. And a 90 minute journey that will take four hours - or much more.

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I Love Turkey
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I Love Turkey: an Article Written Seven Years Ago
By Livingston
T. Merchant, Ph.D.

I love Turkey, but not
the way I love a cruise along the sparkling Mediterranean coast, not the way I
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friends in a tavern. Rather, I love Turkey in the way I adore a
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These are the words which I copied from the tomb in Anatolia of the dervısh Haci Bektaş, a 13th century holy man
who founded a group within Islam that still exists in Turkey. Known as the
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other religions, and they have for centuries championed the cause of social
justice, and they have influenced the thought of modern Turkey before the present regime.

Any road that doesn’t follow science, ends
in darkness,
Give education to women,
Control on your tongue, hands and waist, [sexual organs]
The greatest book to read is man himself,
Honesty is the door of a friend,
Being a teacher is to give, not to take,
The universe is for man, and man for the universe,
Science illuminates the paths of truth,
We travel in the way of science, comprehension and human love,
Clean where you’ve settled and deserve the money you’ve made,
Let’s be one, be…

After earning doctorates in international relations and in Asian history, I went to live and work in eight different countries. Having settled in the Netherlands I decided to share my political observations with friends and colleagues. At my age, I feel I am too old to avoid controversy.